TADHAMUN تـضـامـن

Tadhamun (solidarity) is an Iraqi women organization, standing by Iraqi women's struggle against sectarian politics in Iraq. Fighting for equal citizenship across ethnicities and religions, for human rights, and gender equality.

Protest the suffering of Iraqi Christians: No to terrorism No to state terrorism.Hands off our minorities. Hands off our people. Shame on the human rights violators on all sides. Assemble 11:30 on 28/7/14 near Parliament Square, near Westminister tube station London. For more past events click here

We women of Tadhamun condemn the persisting practice of arbitrary arrests by the Iraqi security forces. We condemn their arrests of women in lieu of their men folk. These are 'inherited' practices. We are alarmed by credible media reports of the Green Zone government’s intentions of executing hundreds of Iraqi men and women.

Sunday, March 5, 2017

(Erbil) – Iraqi forces have forcibly displaced at least 125 families said to have familial ties to affiliates of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), Human Rights Watch said today.

Sunni tribal groups (known as the Hashad al-Asha'ri), within the Popular Mobilization Forces (known as the PMF or Hashd al-Sha'abi), which are under the control of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, and Iraqi soldiers forced the families out of their homes following the passage of a decree issued by local authorities. The families, all from Salah al-Din governorate, are being held against their will in a camp functioning as an open-air prison near Tikrit. The PMF also destroyed some of the families’ homes.

“While politicians in Baghdad are discussing reconciliation efforts in Iraq, the state’s own forces are undermining those efforts by destroying homes and forcing families into a detention camp,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “These families, accused of wrongdoing by association, are in many cases themselves victims of ISIS abuses and should be protected by government forces, not targeted for retribution.”

The fighting has moved from neighborhood to neighborhood, often street by street. Iraqi forces on the ground were backed by Iraqi and coalition aircraft. The Islamic State (ISIS) used improvised landmines and suicide car bombers. By late January, the Iraqi forces controlled the eastern part of the city; in mid-February they launched operations to retake the western half.

When the fighting began, about 1.2 million civilians were in Mosul. Since then, at least 175,000 have fled their homes to seek refuge in government-controlled areas. Iraqi authorities have reported that more than 5,200 civilians have been killed or wounded inside Mosul since the military operation began. The Iraqi forces have taken measures to protect civilians, but casualties have been high.

In January, my colleagues and I interviewed dozens of residents in eastern Mosul who had remained in their homes as the fighting shifted to their neighborhoods. They shared horrific stories.

Although accounts of gender-based violence have emerged from areas under ISIS control, these are the first cases against Sunni Arab women in Iraq that Human Rights Watch has been able to document. Researchers interviewed six women in Kirkuk, to which they had escaped from the town of Hawija, 125 kilometers south of Mosul and still under ISIS control. Human Rights Watch and others have extensively documented similar abuses by ISIS fighters against Yezidi women.

“Little is known about sexual abuse against Sunni Arab women living under ISIS rule,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “We hope that the international community and local authorities will do all they can to give this group of victims the support they need.”

In January 2017, Human Rights Watch interviewed four women who said they had been detained by ISIS in 2016, for periods between three days and a month. Another woman said an ISIS fighter, her cousin, forced her to marry him and then raped her. A sixth woman said that ISIS fighters destroyed her home as punishment after her husband escaped ISIS and tried to forcibly marry her. Five of the six women said that ISIS fighters beat them.

(Erbil) – Armed forces fighting Islamic State (also known as ISIS) to retake a town and four villages near Mosul looted, damaged, and destroyed homes, Human Rights Watch said today. There was no apparent military necessity for the demolitions, which may amount to war crimes and which took place between November 2016 and February 2017.

The Iraqi authorities should investigate allegations of war crimes and hold those responsible to account, Human Rights Watch said. The United States and other countries providing military assistance to the Iraqi Security Forces should press the government to carry out these investigations. The United Nations Human Rights Council should expand the investigation it established in 2014 on ISIS abuses to include serious violations by all parties, including the Popular Mobilization Forces (known as the PMF or Hashd al-Sha'abi), units that were formed largely to combat ISIS, and are under the direct command of Prime Minister al-Abadi. “Absent a legitimate military objective, there is no excuse for destroying civilian homes,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “All the destruction does is to keep civilians from going home.” Read more

December 6, 2016

Paramilitary militias nominally operating as part of the Iraqi armed forces in the fight against the Islamic State armed group are using arms from Iraqi military stockpiles - provided by the USA, Russia, Iran and others - to commit war crimes, revenge attacks and other atrocities, said Amnesty International in a new reporttoday.

Field research and detailed expert analysis of photographic and video evidence since June 2014 has found that the Iraqi militias have benefited from the transfers of arms - manufactured in at least 16 countries. The militias that comprise the “Popular Mobilisation Units” (PMU) deploy more than 100 types of arms - from heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery, as well as a wide range of small arms, including standard-issue Kalashnikov and M-16 automatic rifles, machine guns, handguns and sniper rifles. These predominantly Shia militias have used the arms to carry out the enforced disappearance and abduction of thousands of mainly Sunni men and boys, as well as committing extrajudicial executions, acts of torture and the wanton destruction of property (see examples below).

Children in camps show clear signs of trauma: mutism, self-harming, bed-wetting

Countless children have been left scarred and deeply traumatised by the extreme violence they have experienced and witnessed. In a hospital in Erbil, capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, Amnesty spoke to Umm Ashraf, who described how she and her seven children were injured when a car bomb exploded outside the house where they were sheltering in east Mosul on 13 December, burying scores of people under the rubble of several houses destroyed in the blast. Her eldest daughter, 17-year-old Shahad, lost both her eyes in the attack.

“Our homes have become our children’s graves. My neighbours are still buried under the rubble; no one has been able to dig them out. I dragged my wounded children from under the rubble one by one. But my sister was killed, I could not help her. My neighbour was decapitated in the blast, so many others killed.

“My children saw my sister being killed in front of them; they saw our neighbour who was decapitated in the strike; they saw body parts on the ground. How can they ever recover from that?

read more
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/mosul-iraq-injured-and-traumatised-children-caught-gathering-humanitarian-crisis

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Prime Minister al-Abadi issued Order 91 in February and Parliament passed a law in November designating the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), established in June 2014 and comprising mostly Shi’a paramilitary militias, as a “military formation and part of the Iraqi armed forces”.

Paramilitary militias and government forces committed war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law, mostly against members of the Sunni Arab community. They carried out extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings and torture, forcibly disappeared hundreds of men and boys, and deliberately destroyed homes and property.

Following a suicide bombing that killed 27 men and injured 41 others in Muqdadiya on 11 January, militias carried out revenge attacks against the Sunni community, abducting and killing dozens of men and burning and destroying Sunni mosques, shops and other property.

On 3 June, PMU militias abducted an estimated 1,300 men and boys fleeing Saqlawiya, north of Falluja. Three days later, 605 men reappeared bearing marks of torture, while the fate of 643 remained unknown. An investigative committee established by the Governor of Anbar found that 49 had been killed by being shot, tortured or burned to death. On 30 May, at least 12 men and four boys who were fleeing al-Sijir, north of Falluja, were extrajudicially executed. Prime Minister al-Abadi established a committee to investigate abuses, but the authorities did not disclose any outcome or report any criminal process against the perpetrators.

Iraq now has the third largest population of IDPs in the world, and as government forces begin their assault on Fallujah in what is expected to be one of the biggest battles fought against Daesh, the humanitarian crisis is set to deepen still.

“To be liberated, cities are obliterated,” Professor Mundher Al-Adhami – the first speaker of the afternoon – said of Ramadi and Fallujah, where “nobody has gone back”.

The US and UK had failed to acknowledge Iraqis’ suffering, he added, describing Iraq as a “bad story” which they “don’t want to talk about”.

Undetected by state forces, terrorists ploughed a refrigerated truck
carrying explosives into the densely populated well-to-do district of
al-Karrada in central Baghdad. “People came to buy clothes to celebrate
Eid. Now they are buying coffins,” one survivor lamented.
This is
the latest attack in a long series that IS has launched against
civilians – both Shia and Sunni – in Bangladesh, Turkey, and most
recently Saudi Arabia. Their violence respects no faith.
The
series of fires the explosion ignited converged into a firestorm,
ravaging two shopping arcades in the commercial centre. Bodies recovered
from beneath the rubble were burned beyond recognition – sons
unidentifiable to their mothers. Hadi mall, consumed head-to-toe by the
inferno, was not designed with fire escape routes in mind, as Iraqi
analyst Sajad Jiyad wrote in his blog-post.
“There were no emergency exits, the door to the roof was welded shut”
to keep thieves out. While the same risks easily apply to other
buildings dotted around Baghdad, no official statements on the subject
of fire safety have been issued.

The UN said at least 49 of those kidnapped had been killed and up to 900 remain missing

Up to 900 men and boys who fled their homes near Isis’ former stronghold of Fallujah remain missing in Iraq after being abducted by a militia accused of torturing, shooting and beheading civilians.

The United Nations said captives who have since been freed by the paramilitary group reported a litany of war crimes and atrocities after they sought refuge from battles between Isis and Iraqi forces last month.

Those abducted had been among 8,000 civilians who fled the village of Saqlawiyah, north of Fallujah, as fighting intensified on 1 June.

New Violations Belie US Reference to ‘Isolated Atrocities’

On June 4, 2016, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi opened an investigation into allegations of abuse and three days later announced unspecified arrests and the “transfer of those accused of committing violations to the judiciary to receive their punishment according to the law.” Government officials, however, have not provided information in response to Human Rights Watch inquiries since mid-June about the status of the investigation, who is conducting it, or steps taken so far.

“Failing to hold fighters and commanders accountable for grave abuses bodes very badly for the looming battle for Mosul,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director. “Serious investigations and prosecutions are essential to provide justice to victims and their families, and to deter atrocities by government forces.”

Sunday, May 8, 2016

More than 1,000 detainees, including some as young as 15, are being held without charge in horrendous conditions at makeshift holding centres in Anbar governorate, west of Baghdad, said Amnesty International today.

An Amnesty delegation led by the organisation’s Secretary General Salil Shetty gained access on 30 April to a centre run by Anbar’s counter-terrorism agency (Mukafahat al-Irhab) in Ameriyat al-Fallujah, where 683 male detainees are held without charge. The detainees are crammed into several rooms within a complex of disused warehouses being used as a detention and interrogation facility.

“It was a truly shocking sight - hundreds of human beings packed together like sardines in a tin and held in inhumane and degrading conditions for months on end.

“The detainees are squeezed into a space of less than one square metre each, sitting in a crouching position day and night, unable to stretch or lie down to sleep and are rarely allowed outside for fresh air."read statement in full

Monday, May 2, 2016

GENEVA
(25 April 2016) – Iraq must immediately take concrete steps to plan for
“the day after” the defeat of ISIL, grounded in equality, the rule of
law and a vision that has earned the confidence of all the country’s
diverse communities, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate
Gilmore urged today, at the end of a week-long visit to Iraq.

“Iraq, it seems, has a long memory but is short on
vision,” Gilmore said. “It is like a vehicle travelling over rocky
terrain, with a large rearview mirror but only a keyhole for a
windscreen, despite a vicious contest for the wheel. The dominant
narrative among many of Iraq’s leaders is of ‘my community’s grievance’,
failing to acknowledge the widespread nature of Iraqis’ suffering and
failing to chart a course for an inclusive future.”

“Iraqis are crying out for fairness, recognition,
justice, appreciation and meaningful participation in shaping their
future – a process that goes forward and not backwards.”

“All the leaders of Iraq, at every level, in both word
and action, need to demonstrate a far greater commitment to peace,
equality and to the rule of law than to grievances or to vengeance
hardwired by sectarianism. There is a worrying absence of a political
narrative that brings together all the diverse communities in Iraq, a
narrative that includes all the minority communities. This must be
urgently addressed,” she added.

- See more at: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=19871&LangID=E#sthash.pQvWdB1t.dpuf

GENEVA
(25 April 2016) – Iraq must immediately take concrete steps to plan for
“the day after” the defeat of ISIL, grounded in equality, the rule of
law and a vision that has earned the confidence of all the country’s
diverse communities, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate
Gilmore urged today, at the end of a week-long visit to Iraq.

“Iraq, it seems, has a long memory but is short on
vision,” Gilmore said. “It is like a vehicle travelling over rocky
terrain, with a large rearview mirror but only a keyhole for a
windscreen, despite a vicious contest for the wheel. The dominant
narrative among many of Iraq’s leaders is of ‘my community’s grievance’,
failing to acknowledge the widespread nature of Iraqis’ suffering and
failing to chart a course for an inclusive future.”

“Iraqis are crying out for fairness, recognition,
justice, appreciation and meaningful participation in shaping their
future – a process that goes forward and not backwards.”

“All the leaders of Iraq, at every level, in both word
and action, need to demonstrate a far greater commitment to peace,
equality and to the rule of law than to grievances or to vengeance
hardwired by sectarianism. There is a worrying absence of a political
narrative that brings together all the diverse communities in Iraq, a
narrative that includes all the minority communities. This must be
urgently addressed,” she added.

- See more at: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=19871&LangID=E#sthash.pQvWdB1t.dpuf

GENEVA (25 April 2016) – Iraq must immediately take concrete steps to plan for “the day after” the defeat of ISIL, grounded in equality, the rule of law and a vision that has earned the confidence of all the country’s diverse communities, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore urged today, at the end of a week-long visit to Iraq.

“Iraq, it seems, has a long memory but is short on vision,” Gilmore said. “It is like a vehicle travelling over rocky terrain, with a large rearview mirror but only a keyhole for a windscreen, despite a vicious contest for the wheel. The dominant narrative among many of Iraq’s leaders is of ‘my community’s grievance’, failing to acknowledge the widespread nature of Iraqis’ suffering and failing to chart a course for an inclusive future.”

“Iraqis are crying out for fairness, recognition, justice, appreciation and meaningful participation in shaping their future – a process that goes forward and not backwards.”

“All the leaders of Iraq, at every level, in both word and action, need to demonstrate a far greater commitment to peace, equality and to the rule of law than to grievances or to vengeance hardwired by sectarianism. There is a worrying absence of a political narrative that brings together all the diverse communities in Iraq, a narrative that includes all the minority communities. This must be urgently addressed,” she added.

Beirut – Iraqi
government forces gearing up to drive Islamic State fighters from Mosul
should prioritize protection of civilians. Hundreds of thousands of
civilians remain in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, which the
extremist group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, took control of in
June 2014.

ISIS and pro-government forces both have records of harming civilians during and after military operations. The United States, Iran, Germany,
and other states providing military support to Iraq should condition
their support on scrupulous respect for the laws of war, which prohibit
attacks that disproportionately harm civilians or fail to distinguish
civilians and civilian objects from military objectives.

“Protecting civilians from needless harm needs to be paramount in any battle for control of Mosul,” said Joe Stork,
deputy Middle East director. “It’s essential for the Iraq government to
exercise effective command and control over all its forces, and for
allies like the US and Iran to make sure they do so.”
Human Rights Watch has, since 2014, documented laws of war violations by the Iraqimilitary
and the largely Shia militias that make up the Iraqi government’s
Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), and by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters
fighting ISIS, including summary executions, disappearances, torture, use of child soldiers, widespread building demolition, indiscriminateattacks, and unlawful restrictions on the movement of people fleeing the fighting.
Human Rights Watch also called on ISIS forces to respect the laws of war, and in particular to allow civilians to leave areas under their control, not to use civilians to shield its military objectives from attack, and not to use child soldiers.
In mid-March 2016, the Iraqi army opened a ground offensive from the
town of Makhmur, in Erbil governorate, toward Qayyara, 70 kilometers
south of Mosul, but one month later, only a few nearby villages had been
captured. The US-led coalition has conducted aerial attacks on ISIS and advises local forces on ground attacks. Germany leads a training center for Kurdish forces and provides them with weapons. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps provides military advisors to Iraq.
With a political stand-off in Baghdad over the nomination of new
government ministers, Human Rights Watch called on Iraq’s international
supporters to use their leverage with political and military leaders in
Iraq to ensure civilian protection and compliance with the laws of war.
Popular Mobilization Forces officials have said their forces would be at the forefront of the campaign against ISIS in Mosul, and the Peshmerga also vowed
to participate. Speaking to Human Rights Watch in Baghdad in late
March, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Popular
Mobilization Commission overseeing the PMF, was clear that he expected
his forces would participate in the battle for Mosul.
In late February 2016, Atheel al-Nujaifi, the former governor of Nineveh, who has his own militia, warned that local residents would rise up against the PMF if they participated. On April 11, Iraqi pollster Munqith Dagher presented results
from one survey in which “of the 120 Sunni respondents in Mosul, 100
percent do not want to be liberated by Shiite militias or the Kurds.”
The Popular Mobilization Commission has increased its capacity to
ensure compliance with the laws of war, its spokesperson Yusif al-Kilabi
told Human Rights Watch in late March in Baghdad. Al-Kilabi said the
commission set up a Directorate for Security and Discipline, with 20
staff lawyers providing training on the laws of war and 100 liaison
officers who accompany PMF forces in the field.
Judge Abd al-Sattar Bir Qadar, spokesperson for the High Judicial
Council, told Human Rights Watch that he had recently sent judges to
process detainees the PMF had taken on the battlefield following the
Jazira campaign in March. Bir Qadar added that the judiciary also held
PMF members accountable under civilian law, with 300 PMF members charged
or convicted of crimes and currently held in a new detention facility
in Baghdad’s Kazhimiya neighborhood. Bir Qadar did not provide details
of charges or convictions. Al-Kilabi said some PMF fighters had received
10 and 20-year sentences, but did not say what crimes they had been
charged with.
Iraqi law contains no specific provisions for war crimes, crimes
against humanity, or genocide, and Human Rights Watch urged Prime
Minister Haider al-Abbadi to rectify this in a meeting in late March.
Holding fighters accountable under the laws of war became even more
important after the prime minister, on February 22, 2016, decided to
transform the PMF into a permanent military institution with military
ranks directly linked to the office of the commander in chief, who is
the prime minister.
Kurdish Regional Government officials, in a March 26, 2016 letter to
Human Rights Watch, said that Masoud Barzani, president of the
autonomous Kurdish Region of Iraq, had issued Order No. 3 in March to
Peshmerga fighters to observe principles of human rights and
humanitarian law. The order stated that, “In all possible situations,
civilians should be protected from any threat on their lives and
properties, as well as the protection of their towns and villages which
have been liberated by Peshmerga forces.”
“Training in the laws of war and orders to respect it are positive
moves, but need to result in actual respect for the laws during
conflict,” Stork said. “Given the record of abuses by armed actors on
all sides, it is crucial for Iraq’s international allies to press the
government to discipline and hold accountable fighters and commanders
who violate the laws of war.”Read more:

Baghdad, Iraq, 01 May 2016 – A total of 741 Iraqis were killed
and another 1,374 were injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed
conflict in Iraq in April 2016*, according to casualty figures recorded
by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Violence against civilians has driven three million people into internal displacement in just eighteen months. In 2014 alone, Iraq suffered the highest new internal displacement worldwide, with at least 2.2 million displaced. This has exacerbated the destructive legacy of some 35 years of conflict and international sanctions which have left infrastructure in disarray and about one million living in protracted displacement, mostly in Baghdad.

The ability of displaced people to access safe areas of refuge has been dramatically restricted by the fragmentation of society along sectarian lines and security threats linked to terrorism and counter-insurgency. The Kurdish-controlled north including Kirkuk city, hosts more than a third of Iraq’s internally displaced persons (IDPs) – some 1.2 million as of June 2015, including minority groups. Some 611,700 Sunni Arabs displaced from areas under the control of the Islamic State now find themselves with few safe locations to flee to. Sunnis from areas controlled by ISIL have increasingly been denied the possibility of fleeing to areas controlled by the Government of Iraq (GoI) or by the pershmerga (the militia forces in Iraqi Kurdistan), thus having no choice except to return to areas controlled by ISIL. This has further cemented the division of Iraq into, Kurdish, Sunni and Shia entities.

Humanitarian access to areas beyond government or Kurdish control remains limited with IDPs in these areas being extremely hard-to-reach. In areas accessible to humanitarian organisations, assistance has been complicated by lack of documentation, and administrative challenges. Funding shortages resulting from lower oil revenues have seriously limited the capacity of the national authorities to respond. Other Middle Eastern crises (notably in Syria and Yemen) and donor fatigue have diminished prospects of sufficient international assistance to meet IDPs´ humanitarian needs.

The cradle of civilisation has become a free for all. Twenty five years after a US-led international coalition of states invaded Iraq in Operation Desert Storm, the situation in Iraq remains as deadly as ever. 16,115 civilian deaths were recorded in 2015, with many more injured.

Aftermath of a Coalition air strike near Raqqah, Syria, 5 January 2016, via Raqqah is Being Slaughtered Silently, taken from www.airwars.org

On 1-15 March 2016 alone, according to Iraq Body Count (IBC), 570 civilian deaths were recorded. This includes 60 deaths (39 civilian) and at least 70 injured in a suicide bombing on a checkpoint near Hilla on 6 March. This attack was claimed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) militant group and received extensive international media coverage.

Disclaimer

Samarra Minrate built in 852 AD

Building of 1 500 massive police station !

From the angle of the photo, it is possible to calculate that the complex is being built at E 396388 N 3785995 (UTM Zone 38 North) or Lat. 34.209760° Long. 43.875325°, to the west of the Malwiya (Spiral Minaret), and behind the Spiral Cafe.While the point itself may not have more than Abbasid houses under the ground, it is adjacent to the palace of Sur Isa, the remains of which can be seen in the photo. While the initial construction might or might not touch the palace, accompanying activities will certainly spread over it.Sur Isa can be identified with the palace of al-Burj, built by theAbbasid Caliph al-Mutawakkil, probably in 852-3 (Northedge, Historical Topography of Samarra, pp 125-127, 240). The palace is said to have cost 33 million dirhams, and was luxurious. Details are given by al-Shabushti, Kitab al-Diyarat.Samarra was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO at the end of June. The barracks could easily have been built elsewhere, off the archaeological site.--Alastair Northedge Professeur d'Art et d'Archeologie Islamiques UFR d'Art et d'ArcheologieUniversite de Paris I (Pantheon-Sorbonne) 3, rue Michelet, 75006 Paristel. 01 53 73 71 08 telecopie : 01 53 73 71 13 Email :Alastair.Northedge@univ-paris1.fr ou anorthedge@wanadoo.fr